The Agile Startup: Quick and Dirty Lessons Every Entrepreneur Should Know

Forget the Mission Statement

“It is our job to continually foster world-class infrastructures as well as to quickly create principle-centered sources to meet our customer’s needs.”

—Dilbert Mission Statement Generator

Big companies can afford to do four-day retreats in the mountains to do trust falls, sing Kumbaya, and pay outrageously overpriced consultants to come up with impressively meaningless mission statements. You don’t have this luxury. You’re fighting a war with about as much hope of winning as your grandpa beating Deep Blue at chess. You can’t afford a meaningless mission statement. You need a rallying war cry that will inspire the troops to follow you on your kamikaze march. You need something actionable. You need what Guy Kawasaki calls a “mantra.” A mantra is a three- to four-word phrase that captures the heart and soul of what you’re trying to accomplish. It needs to be inspirational, aspirational, and attainable—inspirational in that it moves and motivates your team to action, aspirational in that it’s a meaningful and worthwhile goal, and attainable in that it’s realistic and achievable. Forget the $50,000 mission statement. Spend an hour and come up with a mantra that inspires your company and makes things happen.

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